


Testes inqui

by Lilliburlero



Category: Dunkirk (2017)
Genre: 1700s, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gen, Historical AU, Jacobite AU, Scotland
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-30
Updated: 2018-04-30
Packaged: 2019-05-14 15:00:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14771864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilliburlero/pseuds/Lilliburlero
Summary: Captain Farrier of Pulteney's Regiment has been ordered to investigate the murder of Colin Campbell of Glenure. He's not happy about it.





	Testes inqui

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [hightide2018](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/hightide2018) collection. 



> **Prompt:**  
>  Dunkirk is set during a specific time frame, but the relationship between Collins and Farrier doesn't have to be confined to the 1940s alone! For this prompt, explore and develop their story by setting it in a time period other than the second World War. 
> 
> Maybe they'll meet in the trenches of a World War I battlefield, where they bond over poetry and shared memories of home (bonus points for mentioning Wilfred Owen). Or maybe Collins is a highlander participating in the 1745 Jacobite rebellion, who ends up falling for an English officer named Farrier. And it doesn't have to be historical- maybe they end up meeting in the modern day, or even on starships in a dystopian future setting! This one's totally up to your interpretation, but feel free to use the description for inspiration.

The size and condition of the house at Acharn came as a pleasant surprise. It should not have, perhaps—a man like James Stewart, who could be evicted by one Campbell on a Friday and become tacksman to another before divine service was over on Sunday, would not live in a typical Highland hovel, for all that he drank in one. Captain Jonathan Farrier of Pulteney’s Regiment had seen what share of low drinking establishments as was not incompatible with the holding of His Majesty’s commission, and eight months in Appin had acquainted him with the poverty of the congested districts, but the sight of the proprietress of Taigh na h-Insaig with a parcel of children, some naked, on the damp earthen floor at her feet, her bodice open to nurse the infant in the crook of her left arm while with her right she tapped and sampled a cask of the local spirit, had roused in him an obscure horror that was yet to dissipate. But the Acharn farmhouse had mortared walls, glazed windows, several well-scrubbed, plain apartments for the accommodation of James of the Glen’s many guests and fosterlings, and most miraculous of all, ample, well-aired stabling. It was a relief, for once, not to have to fear that a stamp and a whinny from Delilah would bring a little weakly outbuilding down around her ears, nor that she would be poisoned by mouldy feed.

He was not otherwise pleased with his orders, which were to oversee the search of the house and the questioning of such of its inmates who were not already in custody with James Stewart in Fort William. While of course it was needful to discover and punish the murderer or murderers of Colin Campbell of Glenure, lest it encourage further Jacobite outrages, it was universally owned that James Stewart was not that murderer, and few people who went by a surname other than Campbell believed that he had actively conspired with the man who had fired the cruel shot, a two-bullet close-range ‘chaser’ that ripped the victim’s lights to flitters, leaving him to die in speechless, conscious agony over the course of half a day. Likely James had offered some material aid and comfort to the killer, and could hang for that alone, but if he had, so probably had half of Appin. It was a lawless place, Farrier told himself, and that justified the use of troops in raids and interrogations. But it would never have flown in his native Middlesex, and was this a united Kingdom, in which every subject of His Majesty enjoyed the same liberties and rights, or was it not? 

He ducked to gaze out of the low window at the rugged eminence under which the farm nestled. A thick mist, that would soak a wig or a woollen coat if you walked a mile through it, clogged its lower reaches. He was a long way from Middlesex now, a long way from wheat ripening in the fields and red poppies poking up through it and pink convuvulus trailing out of it, a long way from oak and ash and elm and lithe boys stripping to dip in Dollis Pond. He halted that line of thought firmly, before it could become maudlin, or worse. No, it was not the fact of the searches that made him uneasy: were he convinced that he served the King’s justice and not maniacal Campbell vengeance, he would happily round up every Stewart in Christendom, and ransack all their houses for the least letter of treachery. But he was not so convinced. Nothing could so convince him. Had he and his small detachment not been placed virtually at the private disposal of Mungo Campbell, the odious Mungo Campbell, who somehow contrived to be volatile, dour, vainglorious and pedantic all at once, the compleat Scot? Farrier scowled ungallantly at the maidservant whom two burly privates were ushering into the room. Though the top of her head did not quite reach the badge of their cross-belts, she stared back boldly. 

She spoke only a few stilted phrases of English, though he could see from her sidelong glances that she understood a good deal more. He had been denied a clerk, let alone an interpreter, further evidence, as if it were needed, that the important work—the work the Campbells valued—was being done by the sergeant and his men turning out the pantries, haylofts and linen presses in search of weapons. He was just a figurehead—he might as well be wearing a gown and stays with his bubbies hanging out. 

‘Damn it—excuse me, madam. This is getting us nowhere.’ 

‘Beg pardon, your honour. I don’t be having the intelligence,’ she said, with a practised look of imbecility. The accent of the Highlander was a curious thing, he thought inconsequentially. One wouldn’t really recognise it as Scotch at all. 

‘Is—there—someone—in—the—house—who—speaks—good—English?’ he bawled, remembering how he had scorned those of his brother officers who believed, apparently, that French and Dutch were dialects of their own tongue, rather slowed, and with the pitch raised to a screech. 

‘Maybe—sir—a—guest—of—my—master’s—sir—coming—from—Cramond—he—is.’ 

‘That’s enough.’ But he could not forbear smiling; it was a pretty enough sort of insolence. ‘I should have been told. What is his name? Is he on the list?’ 

‘They aa use false yins,’ grumbled one of the privates. ‘Traitorous curs.’ 

‘Did I give you leave to speak, Ransome?’ Farrier snapped. 

‘Yes sir. I mean, no sir.’ The man minutely adjusted his sloped musket, staring over Farrier’s head at the rain-spattered window. 

Farrier considered that in all fairness he had probably deserved that, and muttered, ‘Shut up, then.’ 

‘Mr Balfour,’ piped the maid. 

‘Call Mr Balfour,’ Farrier said, sensing he was at a disadvantage without quite knowing why. 

The coachman’s greatcoat and nab-hat cocked down violently over the eyes was somewhat overdone for May, even one so inclement as this; all Farrier saw of Mr Balfour at first was the tip of his nose, an organ rather pink, uptilted and squared-off like a chisel. 

Balfour swept off the hat to reveal his own straw-coloured hair, worn unpowdered, and a fresh, bright complexion. He wasn’t handsome, exactly, there was too little weight and strength in the jaw, and his blue eyes were as wide-set as a polecat’s in a face still broader. And he was only a boy; his creased, truculent expression was even less convincing in its defiance than the girl's. But there was something in it that Farrier liked instantly and instinctively: it was a face that you would be pleased to see surfacing at your shoulder in Dollis Pond, or turn to after a canter across rough country; even, despite its youth, one that might embolden you to undertake a chancy raid upon an enemy position, that in the exhilaration of success or the absurdity of failure would assume a greater beauty than a more regular and symmetrical one. It was, Farrier told himself sternly, a face that would be easy to go wrong with. He must be very careful. 

'Good morning, sir. I beg you uncase, I'm afraid I must detain you more than few moments.' 

The young man shrugged with a look no officer could mistake, or see without a sinking heart, the _'pon your 'ead be it sir don't say us poor 'umble swaddies din't tell you wot was wot sir_ look. It was always impossible to calibrate the precise level of bad faith with which it was deployed, but it never portended good. He unbuttoned the long greatcoat and shrugged it off, letting it fall to the floor. 

Farrier took a sharp breath, recalling a pamphlet he had bought from an importunate pedlar on the road leading from Nieuwpoort, thinking that as well as getting rid of the leering churl it might be of use in acquiring some idiomatic Dutch; the heroine of the history had made a gesture very like, and what lay beneath her cloak had been most attentively (and to Farrier's mind somewhat repulsively) rendered in both prose and rough woodcut, but there the similitude was at an end— 

The privates leapt forward with a clatter of arms. The girl's eyes widened and her mouth crumpled into a monkey's muzzle; she flung her apron over her head and her thin shoulders shook. 

'Stop,' Farrier held up his hand to his men. 'He's not going anywhere.' 

Balfour's face was flushed, but he was smirking, obviously pleased with himself. Farrier hadn't taken gratification in ordering a whipping since he had left Mr Reed's school, but he felt he might well be moved to revoke his humanitarianism in this case. Addressing him, he said, 'What is this—this—' 

Not indignation but mirth choked off his words; though the intent was clear, the execution was as approximate as one might expect after six years of repurposing and dyeing under the (foolish, illiberal, unproductive) Dress Act. The texture of the plaid was roughly that of an old saddlecloth, and some attempt had been made to mute the tartan with indigo, resulting in rusty purples and muddy browns. The length—or perhaps the width, Farrier wasn't quite sure how it worked—was insufficient to the lad's six foot or so in height: a hand's breadth of skimmed-milk thigh showed above his curiously chubby knees. 

Farrier began again. 'This—garb is proscribed, sir. I daresay, being not from the Highlands, you mean it in the character of a jest, but I must tell you the law provides for a term of imprisonment not exceeding six months on conviction of a first offence, and transportation—' 

'Verra weel.' The Lallans sounded almost more foreign than Erse. He put his hand to the massy belt buckle at his waist. 

'No—for Christ's sake! Madam, excuse— Put—put your greatcoat back on.' 

Balfour picked the coat up and threw it around his shoulders, blinking innocently. 

'Am I under arrest, Captain—Captain? I havena had the pleasure.' He thrust out his right hand, preserving the slipping overcoat with the other in a curiously fluent manoeuvre. 

'Farrier. Pulteney's Foot.' The young man's grasp was cool and firm, making Farrier all the more aware of fire in his cheeks, sweat tricking down his jaw into his high, tightly-knotted stock, a raw patch located just too far under his wig to scratch with decorum. 'And no. I'm not here to reprimand small boys for playing at masquerade ball.' 

This did not have the withering effect he had hoped; Balfour tilted his head to one side and smiled in indulgent appreciation. 

'As you wish, Captain Farrier. What can I do for you, then?' 

'Well, in due course, I shall ask you to make a statement on your own account. But first you might help me as an interpreter.' 

The girl peeped from behind her apron. Balfour winked at her, and she tittered. Farrier indicated the vacant stool. 

'Sit down, Mr Balfour.' 

The slight hesitation confirmed the name as an alias, but at this stage Farrier couldn't give a twopenny damn. 'Balfour' proved, over a tedious quarter of an hour or so, to speak Erse about as well as the maid pretended to speak English. 

'—eh, hang oan, fiadhain, wild or savage—an urrainn dhut bruidhinn nàs maille, a Sheónaid? aye, there's my lass—eh, what? sorry, er, an abair sin a-rithist thu, ma's e do thoil e—um, look—' 

He cast Farrier a humorously pleading look. 'This isnae really working, is it?' 

Farrier lifted his chin from his fist and put down his pen. 'Well, no. You're not exactly taxing even my shorthand. Let the girl go, and we'll take your own precognition. You're dismissed, Janet,' he bellowed, abandoning all attempts to appear other than an ambulant slab of Hanoverian gammon. Balfour didn't look so cool and collected himself now, muffled in that overcoat. Well, good, serve the cocky little dick right. Farrier dipped his dry pen. 

'Let's start with your name. Your _real_ name.' 

The lad pouted. 'Balfour was my mother's name.' 

'Well, I'll take your father's, if you please, to make the fireside pair.' 

'Collins,' he mumbled. 

'And your Christian name?' 

'David.' 

'Where are you from?' 

'Essendean, in the Forest of Ettrick.' 

'The girl said Cramond.' 

'My uncle lives there.' 

'Both are a tidy distance from Acharn. How did you become acquainted with James of the Glen?' 

Collins's wary look spoke more of schoolmasters' wives, weak tea and card tables than gaol cells, chains and interrogations. 'It's a long story,' he said uncertainly, 'are you sure you want to hear it?' 

Farrier was not. But he was constrained to this charade while the sergeant and his men turned the rest of the house upside-down for any weapon more deadly than a girl's pearl-handled penknife. 

'I suppose so. The rest of the household ain't exactly _en queue_ to give me their brief lives.' He flinched slightly at the foppish note in his voice, but the boy grinned. Farrier scratched a snail-like doodle on the corner of the hopelessly blotted page in front of him, and dipped his pen again. 'Begin.' 

'Weel. Augh. All right, so. I will begin the story of my adventures with a certain morning in the month of June, the year of grace 175-, when I took the key for the last time out of the door of my father's house...'

Whatever else the lad was, he had the makings of a splendid raconteur. As he conjured the unlit, Gothick house in Cramond, the miserly, villainous uncle with his 'wee drop parritch', the treacherous tower in the thunderstorm, the grim brig _Covenant_ and her ruthless captain (who was nonetheless sentimentally courteous to his mother with a gun salute); the crew, cynical, half-deranged and amoral, never sober; the cretinous ship's boy who was foully done away with; Farrier forgot first to take notes, then that he was meant to be conducting an interrogation at all. He felt himself in the presence of some pristine genius of storytelling, that this tale was the essence of all tales, that every facet, aspect and lineament of narrative was somehow touched in it. 

'—in stature, but well set and nimble as a goat; his face was of a good open expression, but sunburnt very dark, heavily freckled, and pitted with the small-pox, his eyes were unusuall—' 

Farrier started, as if out of heavy sleep and a dream more vivid and compelling than nine-tenths of his real life. 'What? What did you say just then?' 

'Eh—eh, I was describing the man whose wee boat we hit.' 

'Yes, yes. What was his face like again?' 

'Very brown and freckled, much burnt by the sun. Friendly, with light eyes.' 

'No, what else? There was something else. He had scars—smallpox.' 

The boy's face showed horrified realisation before closing firmly, like the shutters on a croft vacated and set for demolition and clearance. Carried away no less than his audience, he had nearly betrayed someone he not only admired but—well, why not use the good old English verb? Loved. Farrier was sure of it, and it made him angrier than he could properly account for. 

'No,' Collins said with the direct look of the shameless liar, 'his complexion was good. For a man of his age.' 

'Which was?' 

'About your own years, sir. Late thirties.' 

Farrier, who was thirty-six, smiled tightly back. 

'Go on.' 

'Ah, sir, I'm taking up your valuable time; I'm sure my rattle isna tae your purpose—' 

'On the contrary, Mr Collins, I believe it very pertinent, and if you wish to go to prison, there is always the matter of what you have under that topcoat.' 

For the first time the young man looked truly uncomfortable. 'As, as I said,' he gulped, 'he had very light eyes, with a kind of dancing madness in them, that was both engaging and alarming; and when he took off, ah, eh, um, took off his, ah, greatcoat, he laid a pair—' 

Boots tramped down the flagged passage outside; a heavy fist thumped the parlour door. 

'Hold it there, Mr Collins.' Farrier nodded to the guards. 

The sergeant, a globular individual of terrifying indefatigability, bounded into the parlour. His arms were filled with bundles of paper, but he contrived nonetheless to indicate attention and salute. Trailing after him came a corporal and another private, both about a third his age, both harried and haggard. They carried a crate between them. 

He tipped his mound of literature onto the trestle table. 'Sedition, sir. Conspiracy. And weapons.' He motioned his inferiors forward. It was a miserable cache they displayed, mainly daggers that you could, at a pinch, pass off as skinning-knives; a pair of fowling pieces and a rusty rapier. 

Farrier suddenly felt very tired himself. It was over. He'd got what he'd come for, or rather what the Campbells had come for, he knew he wasn't going to raise the least protest, and he loathed himself for it. 'Take every man and boy over sixteen years of age into custody,' he sighed. 

'And the weemen, sir? These Hieland wifies are unco shrewish—' 

'No, not the women. Someone's got to be here when the mistress of the house returns.' 

One of the guards at the door moved towards Collins. 'Come on, you heard the captain,' he said, not unkindly. 

Surprise flickered across the wide, young face before a consciously impassive expression supervened and he stood up. 

'There,' Farrier said suddenly, thoughtlessly, 'that's what you wanted, isn't it?' 

The boy turned back. 'Me?' 

'Mm. To be treated as a person of consequence. A man, like—' _like the Stewarts, like James of the Glen and Alan Breck_ was what he meant to say, but the names caught in his craw. 'That was what you meant by that little performance with the—the phillibeg.' 

Collins didn't deny it. He accepted and inhabited his own callowness, it was an oddly mature attitude, when you thought of it. He grinned maddeningly and let the soldier take him by the shoulder. The sergeant began issuing orders to the other men as they left the parlour. 

Farrier got up, took two or three growling paces, like a menagerie beast, then went to the door. 'Make him put some damn breeches on,' he called down the passage. He had never felt so futile, so utterly impotent, so _imprisoned_. Collins would go to Inveraray Jail, he supposed, not Fort William, where James Stewart was held. He might see him again. He felt a queer satisfaction at that, mingled with regret that it could not be on terms of equality, and curiosity still, as to how this Lowland—what was the Scotch phrase? _Lad o' pairts_ , yes, it suited him perfectly: able, rational and confident, still unacquainted with the world's aribitrary, senseless viciousness and injustice—had ended up here, among barbarians. 

He sat down again at the trestle-table and propped his face in his hands. He was alone now, and had a few moments before he had to go out into the yard and direct the arrests. He knocked his wig forward on his brow, grunting as he scratched the irritated patch of scalp. Long before he ceased, his nails and fingertips to the third knuckle were caked in blood.

**Author's Note:**

> Title: from Psalm 35 (34 in the Vulgate) which James Stewart is said to have recited on the gallows: 'False witnesses did rise up; they laid to my charge things that I knew not.'
> 
> I drew most of my material on the Appin murder and its aftermath from James Hunter's _Culloden and the Last Clansman_. Any remining historical inaccuracies or errors are of course my own.
> 
> Collins speaks phrasebook Gaelic: 'could you speak more slowly, Janet? [...] Could you repeat that please?'
> 
> Collins's 'story' quotes verbatim from Robert Louis Stevenson's _Kidnapped_.


End file.
